Teams are in select company

Tuesday

Mar 24, 2009 at 12:01 AM

The St. Mary's girls basketball team came home from Arco Arena on Saturday with a state championship and talk about repeating next year. With no seniors on the roster this season, the Rams' chances look real good. But girls, savor your accomplishment before thinking about what lies ahead, including these random thoughts for a Tuesday:

Bob Highfill

The St. Mary's girls basketball team came home from Arco Arena on Saturday with a state championship and talk about repeating next year. With no seniors on the roster this season, the Rams' chances look real good. But girls, savor your accomplishment before thinking about what lies ahead, including these random thoughts for a Tuesday:

» For the first time, every 1-, 2- and 3-seed advanced to the Sweet 16 in the NCAA men's basketball tournament. Last year was the first when all four No. 1 seeds advanced to the national semifinals. The NCAA Men's Tournament Selection Committee, which has included former Pacific men's basketball coach and current UC Riverside athletic director Stan Morrison the past three years, has been pretty spot-on with its selections and seeding.

» A classic rock radio station in Pennsylvania came up with a bracket ala the NCAA Tournament, where it picked 64 songs and seeded them. Listeners have been asked to vote for their favorite in a head-to-head matchup, and the song with the most votes advances. The No. 1 seeds are "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin, "Hotel California" by the Eagles, "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen and "Back in Black" by AC/DC. The big first-round upset was No. 12-seed "Sweet Child O' Mine" by Guns n' Roses over No. 5 "Highway to Hell" by AC/DC.

» Pacific entered the inaugural CollegeInsider.com Tournament, the fourth postseason men's tournament, joining the NCAA, the National Invitation Tournament and the College Basketball Invitational. How about a tournament between the 16 teams with the lowest rating percentage indexes and calling it March Sadness?

» The 300 NFL employees who recently were laid off or bought out, and the others forced to take unpaid furloughs have to be more than a little upset. The NFL owners are holding their meetings this week at the $600-a-night St. Regis Hotel. But they're in good company. They're sleeping in the same beds AIG executives slept in during one of their junkets.

» Golfers sometimes stretch the boundaries of fashion. Where else could you get away with knickers and argyle socks? Swedish pro Henrik Stenson went out of bounds recently at Doral when he stripped to his boxers to hit out of a water hazard. "I could either be covered in mud completely or play the shot with not too much clothes," he said. "I was doing pretty good in the tournament, so it was all or nothing really." Or more accurately, it really was almost nothing.

» The Raiders will open the 2009 season on Monday Night Football against the Chargers as part of a doubleheader saluting the 50th anniversary of the American Football League. The other game pits the Bills against the Patriots. All four teams began play during the inaugural 1960 AFL season. Oakland went 6-8 behind quarterback Tom Flores, then a 23-year-old product out of Pacific.